The College Fix

Expert raises concerns about bias and unreliable results due to subjective data 

The National Institute of Mental Health awarded an Ohio State University professor $3.6 million to study the effects of “microaggressions” on “bisexual” and “pansexual” youth.

OSU Professor Christina Dyar and her co-investigators received the five-year grant to fund the project titled “Bisexual Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Risk for Depression and Suicidal Ideation,” according to a news release from the Ohio State University College of Nursing.

“This community has been marginalized and excluded from critical health research for far too long,” Dyar said, according to the school.

“The findings from this study will inform the development of interventions designed to help bisexual and pansexual adolescents and young adults overcome microaggressions and discrimination and improve their mental health outcomes,” she said.

Dyar did not respond to requests for comment on the project’s methodology and objectives via email and phone call in the last two weeks.

The board chairman of the medical advocacy group Do No Harm told The College Fix the federally-funded study is problematic as the data will likely be unreliable and prone to bias.

Stanley Goldfarb said measuring “microaggressions” is extremely difficult as questionnaires typically used often produce vague results that are “particularly subject to someone’s individual perceptions.”

The surveys “ask questions like, ‘Has someone disrespected you?’ Well what does that mean? To me, that’s the problem,” he said.

Professor Dyar’s team does plan to use questionnaires to collect data. Five hundred participants will complete surveys every six months for two and a half years. One survey question asks, “How often in the past six months has somebody dismissed your bisexual or pansexual identity?” according to The Lantern.

Goldfarb said the word “dismissed” in this context probably refers to some type of “misgendering.” However, it is often difficult in social contexts to determine the intention behind an act.

“I think there’s a mindset people have where they feel like they’re always being treated poorly. They tend to scan for insults—I once heard a psychologist speak in those terms—so they see everything as an insult,” he said.

MORE: NIH spends $3 million studying microaggressions and HIV

If someone enters a room and stands out from the usual crowd, people might “look askance at them.” But there is no way to accurately and reliably measure that reaction, he said.

“One person’s microaggression can be something that another person totally ignores,” Goldfarb said.

He also told The Fix the attitude of research participants can skew results, especially if researchers enlist the help of those who want to support their preexisting worldview.

“If you’re recruiting people and telling them, ‘I want to do a study about microaggressions,’ then you’re going to get people that are particularly interested in the issue. It’s not going to be a random sample of people that are bisexual or … gender non-conforming,” Goldfarb said.

“Then, when you do these sorts of studies and questionnaires, people want to give the answers they think the evaluators want to hear. The evaluators don’t want to hear ‘this is not a problem in my life.’ They want to hear how much of a problem microaggressions are. The whole thing is skewed and corrupted by this kind of research,” he said.

Further, the researchers don’t know that the results are “generalizable” or “relevant to other parts of the country,” he said.

However, Goldfarb said he would have to read the specifics of the grant and the research proposal to render a complete and final opinion.

When asked for comment, OSU spokesperson Phil Saken stated the school would “pass on this opportunity.”

The project’s research team includes Rosalind Franklin University Professor Brian Feinstein, Washington University in St. Louis Professor Paz Galupo, and University of Maryland Professor Ethan Mereish. The Fix reached out to all researchers via email and phone call for comments on the project. None responded.

Feinstein, the project’s principal investigator, told The Lantern, “This grant not only provides us with the resources we need to be able to conduct this important research, but it also demonstrates the [National Institute of Mental Health’s] recognition of the health disparities affecting bi+ people and the need to better understand their experiences to inform prevention and intervention efforts.”

MORE: New CSU policy to police complaints of bias, microaggressions

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